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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (9 August) . . Page.. 2656 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

recent times about detention centres for refugees and all that sort of thing. They started to cast some doubt. Then the Victorian coroner's report and the Victorian Auditor-General's report said that none of the predicted savings had been realised, and all of a sudden a cloud of doubt pervaded the committee.

We asked for a cost-benefit analysis. Apart from the word "prison", the three words that our committee chair did not want to hear as often as he did were "cost-benefit analysis". If it was not me getting upset because we did not have it, it was the government saying why they could not give it to us. I am pleased to see that at least the Rengain report has something like that in it.

Off we went around the countryside on what one member of the committee somewhat inappropriately described as a junket, I thought at the time. Nonetheless, the information we brought back was invaluable. People's ground started to shift, which was a terrific thing from where I was sitting.

We need to consider what we mean by the hybrid model. I guess it is pretty clear what the public model is. It means that everybody employed in the prison is a public servant. Under the private model, everybody employed in a private prison is not a public servant.

The hybrid model affords us an opportunity to get the best mix. I reckon we have a really good opportunity to get the best mix while still adhering to the philosophy that the administration and allocation of justice are a community responsibility. We are not locked into saying that we have to provide it even though we do not have the expertise. We can let contracts for people to run behaviour modification programs.

I refer the Assembly to recommendation 13, which says that if the government proceeds with a contract for a private operator to provide custodial staff the contract should have a transition-of-business clause. That will protect the jobs of the workers currently involved in the corrections system.

I refer members to page 22 of the report. It says:

The one area which may be difficult to outsource to the private sector is that of "custodial services". For a best-practice prison to function well, the custodial officers would need to be well-trained and able to function as case managers.

That was something we found really useful in both the private sector prison at Mount Gambier and the Lotus Glen public sector prison in Queensland. It worked in both of those facilities. I thank Mr Hird for suggesting that we should go and see Lotus Glen, because that was an eye-opener for us. The report says:

In the committee's view it would be preferable if this key function-

that is, the custodial services-

remained with the public sector, at least in the initial period of the prison.

One member of the committee felt that it was not only preferable but essential that the custodial services remain in the public sector, and I fess up to being that member. If the government picks up the spirit of that recommendation, it has to do something rather

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